“I
seek in the motion of the forest, in the sound of the pines, some
accents of the eternal language.”

SÉNANCOUR.

I
COULD never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees;
that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; that
Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of “the
immortal ten thousand.” Feelings of this kind are natural; among
natural men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is
that any should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the
day when I did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was
taught to call it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the
English name) with something like reverence. Especially was this true
of one, — a tree of stupendous girth and height, under which I
played, and up which I climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub
against the sky. That pine ought to be standing yet; I would go far
to lie in its shadow. But alas! no village Xerxes concerned himself
for its safety, and long, long ago it was brought to earth, it and
all its fair lesser companions. There is no wisdom in the grave, and
it is nothing to them now that I remember them so kindly. Some of
them went to the making of boxes, I suppose, some to the kindling of
kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did the illustrious Bobo, for the
love of roast pig, burn down his father’s house.

No
such pines are to be seen now. I have said it for these twenty years,
and mean no offense, surely, to the one under which, in thankful
mood, I happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs
through its branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to
itself that giants are, and always have been, things of the past, —
things gazed at over the beholder’s shoulder and through the mists
of years; and that this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic
of times remote, has probably grown faster since it was cut down than
ever it did while standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather,
let me be glad that a tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a
wonder of wonders it would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover
of imaginative delights wished that he could forget Shakespeare and
read him new, so I would cheerfully lose all memory of my king of
Weymouth pines, if by that means I might for once look upon a tree as
upon something I had never seen or dreamed of.

For
that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no
suggestion of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to
be found in any forest, since the forest would be no better than a
park if the separate members of it were allowed room to develop each
after its own law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total
effect of her picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of
particular details.

I
once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a
Canadian mountainside, where the lumbermen had left standing a few
scattered butternuts. I can see them now, — misshapen giants,
patriarchal monstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this
way and that, and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small,
one-sided bunch of leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood.
For a week I had been wandering through it with delight. Such beeches
and maples, birches and butternuts! I had not thought of any
imperfection. I had been in sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed
his work in the same spirit in which it had been wrought. Now,
however, with these unhappy butternuts in my eye, I began to look,
not at the forest, but at the trees, and I found that the spared
butternuts were in no sense exceptional. All the trees were deformed.
They had grown as they could, not as their innate proclivities would
have led them. A tree is no better than a man; it cannot be itself if
it stands too much in a crowd.

I
set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine, —
a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps, — that it suffers less
than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not
entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk
is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward
the zenith; but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless, — hardly more
than a tall stick with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical
white pine you must go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such,
standing by itself in a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable
for its size, but of a symmetry and beauty that make the traveler
turn again and again, till he is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No
pine-tree ever grew like that in a wood.

I
go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into
being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders
of the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly
number of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the
poorest tree as better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my
opinion at sight of these slender trunks, so ungainly and
unsupported. The first breeze, one would say, must bring them down
upon the roofs they were never meant to shade. Poor naked things! I
fancy they look abashed at being dragged thus unexpectedly and
inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to see the householder
lifting his axe against one of them I think I should not say,
“Woodman, spare that tree!” Let it go to the fire, the sooner the
better, and be out of its misery.

Not
that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The
forest, like every other community, prospers — we may rather say
exists — at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense
is true economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in æsthetics
the end justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered,
symmetrical, green to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the
meadow or stands a-tiptoe on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a
pleasure to every eye. A pity and a shame that it should not be more
common! But the pine forest, dark, spacious,
slumberous,
musical! Here is something better than beauty, dearer than pleasure.
When we enter this cathedral, unless we enter it unworthily, we speak
not of such things. Every tree may be imperfect, with half its
branches dead for want of room or want of sun, but until the devotee
turns critic — an easy step, alas, for half-hearted worshipers —
we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can do without prettiness,
and a touch of solemnity is better than any amusement.

Where
shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life and
death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of
the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words.
Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its
innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then “he that
hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Wonderful is human speech, —
the work of generations upon generations, each striving to express
itself, its feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its
joys, its inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its
complexity, its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the
visitations of the heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable;
it whispers to us of things we have never said and never can say, —
things that lie deeper than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are
our ears if we hear, for the message is not to be understood by every
corner, nor, indeed, by any, except at happy moments. In this temple
all hearing is given by inspiration, for which reason the pine-tree’s
language is inarticulate, as Jesus spake in parables.

The
pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth.
Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a model
housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best,
with a modest figure of green — preferably of evergreen — woven
into it; a tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club
moss, with here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood
is sombre, its taste severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that
the pine wood, like the rest of us, is not without its freak, its
amiable inconsistency, its one “tender spot,” as we say of each
other. It makes a pet of one of our oddest, brightest, and showiest
flowers, the pink lady’s-slipper, and by some means or other has
enticed it away from the peat bog, where it surely should be growing,
along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the arethusa, and here it
is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of sand and on a mat of
brown needles. Who will undertake to explain the occult “elective
affinity” by which this rosy orchid is made so much at home under
the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?

According
to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If by this
is meant simply that we cannot account for them,
the statement
is true enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes
nor dislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every
vagary of opinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient
knowledge on our part, could be explained and justified. The
pine-tree and the orchid are not friends by accident, however the
case may look to us who cannot see behind the present nor beneath the
surface. There are no mysteries per se, but only to
the
ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly as we talk of it, has
its favorable side, — as it is pleasant sometimes to withdraw from
the sun and wander for a season in the half-light of the forest.
Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where there is never
any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with the partridge-berry
vine and the lady’s-slipper. It is good, I think, to live awhile
longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; and to hear
overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate murmurs.

I
am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of other
trees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to a
summer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding,
ripening, and falling, — a “worlde whiche neweth everie daie.”
What would winter be worth without the naked branches of maples and
elms, beeches and oaks? We speak of them sadly:

“Bare
ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

But
the sadness is of a pleasing sort, that could ill be spared by any
who know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though
one tree differeth from another-tree in glory, we may surely rejoice
in them all. One ministers to our mood to-day, another to-morrow.

“I
hate those trees that never lose their foliage; They
seem to have no sympathy with Nature;
Winter
and summer are alike to them.”

So
says Ternissa, in Landor’s dialogue. I know what she means. But I
do not “hate” an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a
tree or in a man. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am
glad to see some tokens of it — not too frequent, indeed, nor too
self-assertive — in the world about me. And so I say, let me never
be, for any long time together, where there are no Weymouth pines at
which I may gaze from afar, or under which I may lie and listen. They
boast not (rare stoics!), but they set us a brave example. No “blasts
that blow the poplar white” can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No
frost has power to strip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but
how dauntless its spirit! — a truly encouraging paradox, lending
itself, at our private need, to endless consolatory moralizings. The
great majority of my brothers must be comforted, I think, by any
fresh reminder that the battle is not to the strong.

For
myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be always
the pine-tree’s neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with
it I may absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its
fragrant breath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more
truth than Landor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden,
“Happy the man whose aspirations are pure enough to mingle with
it!”
________________________________________

1
The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club
for January,
1888, page 13.